What a month!

Well, it's been a little more than a month.  There's been no updates because I've been strapped at work getting the website for Taunton Press up and running.

As I said in my last update, we started and finished the framing, the frame is up, the house is sheathed, we've got felt on the roof, and it kind of looks like a real house now.  We even have a front porch!

For the most part the house has gone up as planned.  We had fairly good weather, a few weeks where it got pretty wet but it appears no worse for the wear.  The plan is to get the shingles on very soon but it seems that won't happen until after Nov. now.  Our builders had to take off for another job, which is understandable since we got going so much later than we had planned, but it's disappointing to watch the progress stall.  I've considered getting up there and starting the roof myself. :)

On the upside, we were able to get started with the plumbing.  It's just pvc and pex so it's sort of ok that the house can't be closed in.  I made a mistake on my first try with the waste plumbing in that I oversized the system.  Luckily I have some friends who have either gone through this before or are professional plumbers that talked some sense into me.  Not only did it save me $100 on $300 in materials, it is going to work better and take up less space in the ceiling.

We also got around to getting some more quotes on insulation.  We're looking very hard at a hybrid closed cell spray foam and blown in cellulose or fibreglass.  You can spray foam 1 to 2" to air seal and then use more traditional insulation and save quite a bit of money while still getting pretty good insulating value.  Energy code where I live is R-21 in the walls and R-49 in the attic so R-28 in the walls and R-60 in the attic should be plenty.  With the addition of the geothermal it will be many years before we recover the cost on more than that.

The one thing I have noticed over the past month is how different stages of framing has changed my impression of the space in huge way.  Initially, it looked gigantic, then when the framed walls went up it looked kind of small.  Then, unintuitively, the addition of sheeting and openings for windows made the space look much bigger.   Adding on the roof made it seem even bigger.

So far there is only one thing I regret in my design and that's the 1 foot of space that the stairs stick out beyond my guest bedroom.  The whole corner there seems like some wasted space, but the funny corner where the stairs stick out started to annoy me.  Unfortunately that wall bears load because the trusses bear there, so there's no real changing it now.  Still, if that's the only regret up to this point I'd say we're doing pretty well.

First time on the new floor

My boys playing in what will be their room

 

This one actually takes a little imagination because of the gigantic dirt pile in the way.

View from the great room

Driveway base.  Now you can actually get up the hill when it's wet.

Setting trusses

Fractured Earth stamp on the front porch.

 

Finally ready to frame

Between this post and the last one has been 3 weeks of frustration and nothingness.  We poured the floor a week later than scheduled because the radiant floor didn't pass the inspection and then it rained the rest of the week so they couldn't get the trucks in.  Then, when we finally got the floor poured we had run into a scheduling conflict because the time had run into another job he had already started on. So now it's 3 weeks after the pour and we're finally ready to get started framing.  Materials for the basement framing arrived today. 

Most of the framing is pretty conventional.  The only difference is the engineered i-joists instead of regular floor joists.  Actually, now-a-days i-joists are commonly used because they are much easier to get in consistent sizes, they don't warp and contract causing squeaky floors.  We don't have them, but some of the new i joists even come with pre-cut areas to run ducts, electrical and plumbing.

There are several other things I wanted to share.  One, as a software developer I am  used to project tracking software.  I ended up using one called PivotalTracker.   It is simple but definitely good enough.  It also has features like the ability to predict your end date given your current rate of completion.  Ours right now is going to finish up at some point in 2013.  But that should pick up as our builder gets in there and we can stop waiting on contractors to get started.

This weekend we'll be putting up a cable gate on the driveway.  Apparently someone decided they would park in our garage(that's really just concrete footings at this point, but still... who does something like that?  So far nothing has come up missing but we're not taking chances.

Ready to pour the floor

The last week since my last post we've worked really hard to get ready to pour our basement floor.  Not many pictures but some really interesting stuff and a lot of money out the door.

Last week our GeoStar Mechanical finished drilling the loop for our geothermal system and brought the main lines into the basement. Our flatwork contractor wanted that done before he finished compacting.  The drilling process is actually quite interesting.  The shape of the bit allows them to essentially drive it fairly accurately to a given end point.   They have a locator that operates something like a stud sensor so they can follow the tip.  When they were describing it to me my programmer's brain was picturing a little robot with a drill head on it but the mechanism is actually much simpler.  The tip is shaped something like a duck bill, flat and angled in one direction.  So when it moves forward it will go in the direction the point is facing.  To make it go straight they simply start it spinning.  The tip is connected to a steel pipe that can bend to a certain extent over long distances.  When the tip comes out of the ground, they simply attach some pressure cuffs to it(think Chinese finger puzzles) and pull the tip back, thus pulling the pipes for the ground loop back through the hole and up to the drilling rig.  With this mechanism they were able to drill all 6 loops in less than 8 hours through ground that we probably couldn't have gotten excavation equipment into anyway.

So why not just use traditional excavation and slinky coils?  There are a few reasons we decided against that.  First, the horizontal boring allows us to put the pipe down 10' or more.  The deeper the pipe the more consistent the temperature of the ground and thus the better they can calculate the loads required to heat a house.  If you do a geothermal loop wrong it's a pretty big mess and you won't get sufficient performance.  I think anyone would be pretty disappointed to spend $30k on a heating and cooling system that didn't heat and cool the house.  So depth was one reason.

Jamie from Geostar Mechanical drilling the ground loop.

Another reason is the ground composition.  We have what could be politely referred to as some pretty soft ground.  In the spring we won't be able to drive a lawn mower in there and a 4 wheel ATV may even have difficulty.  In a drier summer the surface is usually fairly dry but still soft.  This summer the ground just dried out the standing water before they started drilling.  Bottom line, if you take excavation equipment in there its likely you'll get stuck at least once.  Along with that is the fact that the trench would be full of water almost as soon as you start digging.  The fact that the excavator wouldn't be able to see the bottom means he wouldn't be able to get it smooth enough to prevent the kinds of uneven-ness that could cause the lines to break and create a huge mess.  Can you imagine total failure of your system because the pipes broke as they were being covered up?

But the wetness that causes the problems is the very reason I wanted to put the loop out there.  You get the best of both worlds between a closed pond loop and a ground loop.  The greater the conductivity of the ground, the greater the ability to both heat and cool.  I have heard great things about the kinds of efficiency you get out of geothermal, I am excited to see how mine performs given the choices we made so far.

The next thing we did this week was lay radiant floor.  Never done it before and I have to say that it was harder than I thought it would be.  It wasn't terribly physical in nature, and maybe I made it harder than it should be, but I put a lot of thought into how to lay out the pipes and a) I miscalculated the square ft and b) I blew the layout anyway. 

Side note... and this bit me both in materials both for insulation and radiant floor, when you buy materials make sure you calculate the sq ft on inside dimensions for the area you are actually going to do something with.  I had outside dimensions on my print and figured, "eh, how different could it be."  This is why I did very poorly in math.  Think about it, 8" walls on both sides is 16" multiplied by the length of the wall and you start getting some fairly significant dimensions if your walls are long.  By the time you over-order to make sure you have enough materials you end up with more than you can use.  It's alright, we can still use it, but now we're going to have radiant flooring in the kitchen and main bathrooms too.  I would be a lot more disappointed but I got a great deal on the materials going through Geostar so I'm not so horribly disappointed.

Our first try we failed our inspection but it's not really fair to say it's our fault.  My dad who's 80 years old and can still work way harder than I can... who worked tirelessly with me all day until about 10pm on Sunday and late into the night on Monday getting all the pipes connected to the manifold... who worked on it by himself while I had to go to work the last couple days was unable to get the system sealed up.  For those who don't know how this works, the system has to be able to hold air pressure in order to pass inspection.  Our system kept leaking air and he was unable to figure out where it was coming from.  He thought he had it sealed up but when the inspector came all the dials were at 0.  The problem is, he can barely hear and turns off his hearing aids because they whir in his ears whenever he bends over.  It just so happens that the pressure release valve in the test gauge was loose when it came from the factory(think the pin inside a tire stem) so it was leaking air.  Well, leaking is a bit of an understatement.  With his hearing aids off he couldn't hear the air gushing from the valve and thus it didn't hold any air for the inspector to see.  Fail.  So this morning I stopped down to the site before work and we got that all fixed up and, 24 hours(and $45 in penalties later), we passed our inspection and are now ready to pour. 

Special thanks to the crew from Hunt & Nieboer Concrete for prepping the surface and laying the slab insulation.  They should be out here pouring our floor by the end of this week or early next week.  Once the floor is down, it's time to backfill and then we finally get to the framing.

End of Month 1

I realized how long it's been since I updated the blog on progress.  The last couple weeks were kind of slow, a lot more work by me than other people.  The weekend after they pulled the forms I was able to get footing drains in but I realized that my plan for where I wanted my basement bathroom wasn't going to work.  So I went back to the drawing board on that, modified design and placement and finished the plumbing for that last weekend.  We also got some insulation on the frost walls, completed the radon system, and got our inspections on the rest of the foundation and the underground plumbing.  I have to say, I got a lot of satisfaction out of that green sticker for the plumbing knowing that I did all that myself with some helpful advice from my brother-in-law and the book Code Check from Taunton Press.

Just as an aside, I got the Code Check book in the mail on Saturday morning on my way out to work on the plumbing and within 10 minutes of going through the plumbing section I noticed a problem with my plan and made a small adjustment.  I would have failed my inspection without it.  Given what is in this one and how much it helped me I'll probably purchase the larger version to help me through the rest of the process.  So thanks to the folks at Taunton Press for producing such a helpful resource.

Anyway, that aside, there have been some less than positive results.  While it's not a huge deal, I learned some stuff about concrete.  Yes, I know, it cracks.  Luckily, even if it cracks, as long as they put a sufficient amount of rebar in it, it's not a huge deal.  The other thing I learned about is what I've heard called a "freeze-off" line.  That is what happens when they change out trucks and the stuff they have already put into the form hardens to the point where it doesn't mix quite right with the rest of it.  I have some pics of what ours look like. I've had a few people look at them and they say they are not too bad, but it can be a concerning sight to see in your brand new concrete wall.

Edit: I followed up with Terry McKinney who poured my walls and he said they actually used a different concrete mix between those lines so the color change is attributed to the difference in concrete mix.  Like any good contractor he is going to follow up by coming out to take a look but he was confident that was the problem. 

Tomorrow our geothermal contractor, Geostar Mechanical, will be drilling our loop, which should be an interesting thing to watch.  Jamie uses a horizontal boring rig to drill the loop which allows him to make sure they are in a nice straight line, no kinking or bending the pipe.  Plus, he can get the loop a little deeper than traditional excavation so the ground temperature is a little more predictable.

Thursday we should have our slab insulation delivered from Williams Insulation in Adrian, MI.  I'm hoping our pex gets here for the radiant floor by next Monday or sooner so we can get that down and the floor poured early next week.  Once that is done, we hand it over to our shell contractor.

Also done this week was to get a quote back from Great Lakes Insulation for Icynene spray foam insulation.  Icynene is quite an interesting product.  Check out the videos from their website because the expansion factor for this stuff is really incredible.  It goes on like paint and expands to the point that you have to cut it off in order to put the drywall on.  The R-value is around 3.6, which is not spectacular in and of itself.  However, it's strength is in its ability to seal the space with the high R value and not settle.

Here are some pics that round out the work done in August.

Building Day 13 - Forms are up, walls soon to come

Forms are up!  It's really cool to see how everything is coming together.  I can't wait to stand down in there and try to visualize a basement around me.

It's also amazing how fast they can go.  The footings went in yesterday(no pics of that, sorry)... today they may be ready to pour the walls.  I really am astounded at how fast they are going.  we have walls.  5 concrete trucks pulled in and out of our driveway today to get enough for the walls, I think we used probably 4 1/2.

After watching the crew work today I can't say enough about the McKinney's crew.  My Dad isn't impressed by many people, but he was very impressed with the work ethic and the job that Terry's guys did.  I would recommend McKinney Poured Wall to anyone who needs a concrete wall.  They started on another job at 7am this morning and finished up our walls at about 7pm this evening and during the two or three times I stopped by to watch they were always working just as hard.

Here's the pics:

End of Week 1

So we finished out the week last week a little slow.  Just the excavating was completed because of a bit of a miscommunication.  However, frost walls for the north and east walls are completed as well as a gigantic hole in the ground where our house is going to go is now dug.

This week I'm hoping for a flurry of activity.  So far the forms have been set for the footings, inspection for all that is tomorrow.  Then footings poured Wednesday and walls on Thursday.  At least that's the plan.

Also, so far this week we have selected a flatwork contractor, Hunt & Neiboer Concrete in Schoolcraft as well as a contractor for geothermal, GeoStar Mechanical out of Galesburg. 

Here's a few more pics from week 1.

Construction begins! 8-6-2010 (FINALLY)

Ok, so it's a modest beginning, but the loan is complete, the permits are done, we've got bulldozers on the lot, moving earth.  Right now it's just the topsoil we are moving but there's a huge pile of it that our boys thought was the best thing they've ever seen.  My oldest said today, "There's our dirt piles!" as we drove by.

We're using Newhouse Excavating for the excavation and driveway.  They are a local company that's been around for a long time, they did my Dad's house when he built 35 years ago.  The poured walls are being done by Terry McKinney. Woolley Builders is coordinating and finishing the shell of the house including siding, roofing, and insulation.  Still TBD is the contractor for the concrete flatwork(although I have a pretty good idea who that's going to be), Geothermal(waiting on one quote before deciding), and sewer (again, we have a pretty good idea).

Here's some pics from day 1:

 

Lots going on, very little to do with building a house

It's been a busy last couple months, very little of which is advancing our house toward completion.  There is still no hole... coming up on 4 months after we wanted to start.  Some back and forth with the electrical company trying to get a wire moved, we were delayed a week with some personal issues, and now the title company is giving us trouble about me being my own general contractor.

In all honesty, I'm starting to think that being your own GC just isn't worth it if you want to actually have a house.  The system is just not set up to work that way anymore.  It's frustrating at best, infuriating at worst.  It takes absolutely FOREVER to get anything going quickly.  Chasing down contractors by phone is just not feasible for my schedule, but contractors don't respond well to email so it really blows the timeline when you can't get in contact with people.

Bottom line, they need to fix the system so people can build houses and not regulate to the least responsible person out there.

Finally, something went as expected

The last week has finally seen some movement on the house building process.  I got a quote from one of the 3 builders and it came in right around the numbers I had so that's the number I went to the bank with.

The bank I am using is a local bank, which seems to be the only one that will still allow an average guy like me to get a construction loan and be the general contractor without a builders license.  To be clear on this, since the housing bubble came crashing down, banks have significantly altered their lending practices so if you are reading about the great experiences of owner builders be aware that things have changed in the last couple years.  Most big banks will not give loans to owner-builders anymore unless they have a builders license.  If you are going to find one, it's best to start with local banks.  I called almost every bank in our area and found one, which happened to be the same bank my Dad got his construction loan from and happens to be in the same town as we are intending to build.  Kalamazoo County State Bank is reviewing our loan request right now.  One of the things I love about small communities is that you are more than just a number to them.  I happen to know the CEO of the bank and went to school with the children of the board members.  So we hope to get a phone call next Tuesday telling us we're approved for the loan and then we can start getting really cooking on this.

Why does it take so long?  My last post here was nearly a month ago when I was lamenting the length of time it was taking to get contractor bids for the shell of the house.  A lot of those issues are still valid.  Builders simply don't move very fast and, while they don't have a lot of business right now, all the building trade workers have contracted their businesses.  So even though there isn't a lot of work, there's a lot less people out there to do it so it still takes a while.  The perception is that you can throw them a bone and they'll snap it up like starving dogs and that is simply not the case.  Like in many other industries, quality is winning out, so a lot of the companies who are noted for quality work have plenty while those who are not are actually more desperate.  For the entire market, that is a good thing.  During the housing boom, just about anyone who could pass the test for a builders permit was out there calling themselves a builder when they actually knew very little about building.  This pushed some good quality builders right out of the market and into other markets like remodeling, high end, luxury housing, special trades like cabinetry, and so on.

I contacted 7 builders on the job for the shell.  Some people would question if I'm really an owner-builder if I am getting the entire exterior done by someone else.  However, one of the first things anyone will tell you if you are going to be an owner-builder is to know your own limits.  While I am confident that I can do most of the exterior work, I can barely find time to post on this blog, so roofing, siding, and framing a house in a timely fashion is out of the question.  The exterior work needs to be done fairly quickly so it doesn't spend a couple months exposed to the elements.  That's why I've got a builder doing that work.  Based upon the first quote, if I had been able to do it all myself I would have saved about $40,000 in labor and contracting fees, so it's not chump change to have this all done.  That number includes excavation, foundation, framing, siding, deck, roofing, and driveway.  If I have someone else dig my drain-field and sewer that will be roughly another $3000.  Those are just labor costs and it equals about 1/2 the cost of the materials.  So if you are trying to estimate cost and you are just trying to ballpark the numbers, take your building plan to any building center.  They can give you an estimated cost for materials, then multiply that by 50% and you'll get a rough idea of the labor cost.  Those figures can change by area, but for Southwest Michigan I've found that to be fairly accurate.

Other things I have explored but gave up on were things like metal roofing.  I have been told metal roofs cost about 3x the value of a traditionally priced, dimensional-shingle roof.  That doesn't factor in lifetime or anything like that, just straight cost which is not truly an apples to apples comparison.  What I found in reality is that for our roof, which is roughly 50 squares, it was going to cost about $25000 just for materials.  There are also many things to consider before going that route.  For instance, steel roofs, while quite durable, are not warrantied against rust.  Any time you cut or scratch the roof, it will rust eventually.  Other materials are not as durable, but resist rust and are cheaper.  You also have other considerations like underlayment, type of fastener, and so on.  If you want to put a nail right through your roof to fasten it like you're building a barn... be my guest.  After all, it's your roof and your house and that is the cheapest way to go.  In the end, we're going to do a traditional, 30 yr dimensional shingle which will probably last 12-15 years, but then we'll have to make the decision again if we want to go another 15 years or drop the money for a metal roof.  Who knows, the technology may be 100% different by that time.   I did find a fantastic company in American Metal Roofs and they would probably be the company we'll use if we decide to go with that.  But it's a bridge we'll cross when we come to it.

In general, that's the philosophy we are taking with most of our our decisions.  If it can be easily replaced, we're going with the lower quality option and choosing to replace it in the future.  That means hollow core doors, Ikea kitchen, gravel driveway and so on.  A lot of owner-builders thumb their nose at decisions like that, but here's the deal.  If you're like me and you don't know for sure that  you're going to be in the house in 5-10 years, it's silly to spend the money on that stuff because you're not going to get it back if you have to sell it.  Eventually, we'll put in nicer cabinets and solid doors, but it's simply not something we're prepared to do right now.

We did have one minor setback.  We had an overhead, bare wire running across the property which we thought we could just have the power company move.  To do that it would cost another $3-4,000 plus the cost/time to remove the trees.  With the regulations today, you should basically remove the trees that are near power lines because they are eventually going to die anyway.  New regulations require branches to be 20' from the line which means they have to cut significant parts of the tree away.  You might as well cut the trees down and replace them with shrubs that will grow to be less than 10' tall.  So we have the decision of moving the house about 20' to the north and east, which will extend the driveway but possibly require less in the way of excavation... or we can leave it there and cut down a bunch of trees and spend extra money to have the line moved.  Moral of the story, pay attention to what is overhead when planning the place to put your house on your land.  It's not cheap to move it.

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Builders don't work at the speed of the information age

If you're like me, you're quite used to communications, decisions, and so on at the speed of email or even faster.  Many of us are on the down-side of using email for communication and many have moved on to other forms like twitter or facebook in place of some communication you previously used.

Builders don't seem to be like this.  At least not the ones I have bidding on my house.

Out of the 5 builders I have contacted, 3 of them have asked for my house plan in physical form, either handing it to them or sending it via snail mail.  I can't tell you the last time I actually put something in snail mail.  The files are too large to send via email, the attachment ends up somewhere around 80MB.  So I decided to use Dropbox to get the files in downloadable form.  However, none of the builders have, so far been able to open them even though I seem to have no trouble at all.  I can't tell if this is lack of technical proficiency or the file simply doesn't transfer to their computer correctly or some other real technical problem.  It's been 3 weeks now and I still have no quotes from these builders because of going round and round with issues like this or vacations or my own busy schedule.  I had hoped to be building the house a month ago and the last time I adjusted the schedule we can't even hope to start before the middle of June.

Another issue is, each of these builders seem to check their e-mail once a day.  As a programmer, my life is spent sitting in front of my computer which notifies me when I have a new message.  Then, on the rare occasions when I'm not sitting there, I have my blackberry with me all the time, so I am unfamiliar with what it is like to be so disconnected that a mistake or a technical failure caused a full day or maybe even more of delay time.

For my discovery of the week, as I was reading through the regulations on doing it yourself for electrical, I found that if you want to do your own, in most cases  you can but you are liable if the wiring in the house starts a fire even if you don't live there anymore.  I don't know the details of that; I'd love for a lawyer to give me more, but that seems like garbage if the building inspector has passed the job.  A change as small as a nail that is two long in the wrong spot could cause a short and a fire which should not be my fault.  What is the point of building codes and inspections if you are going to be treated differently by ever bank, realtor, and legal authority down the road even though you may have done something exactly the same as a licensed electrician?

The devil is in the details

So, we got our first bid from a builder over the weekend.  It was a turnkey estimate, but it came in way above what we were hoping for.  And I mean, WAY above.  So far above that I don't think the house will be worth that once it's done.  Needless to say, that was very discouraging.

If there is one thing I can recommend to a prospective owner-builder, it's determination.  Especially when  you think you have an idea of what is required or if you have some help/consultation from people who haven't built a house in a while, new regulations and requirements can really catch you off guard.  Plus, the costs of building may have gone up significantly if your "help" built their house more than 10 years ago. 

Some hidden costs are things like permits.  I'm pretty sure that, if you dig a hole to take a crap in you need a permit for it.  You need the building permit, yes, but that doesn't cover everything.  You need separate permits for plumbing, electrical(which will usually require you to submit a wiring print showing switches, circuits, etc), and so on.  Also, you have to calculate cost of labor vs your time to complete.  If you are paid by the hour this is a huge consideration because if you are taking time off of work, unpaid, to work on your house, you may be paying more than just paying a professional to do it.

Another thing to watch out for, some banks will not give you equity on the parts of the house you build yourself.  Check with your bank for details on that, but an owner-builder that we know had this happen to them.  The upside is that their taxes were lower because the house was assessed for a lower value, but who wants their house to be devalued just because they did work themselves.

The lesson from all of this is to ask before you plan.  Had I asked some of these questions previous to starting the project my expectations would have been a lot better and I would have been prepared.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating a turnkey solution if for no other reason than there seems to be some collusion between the state, the banks, and the builders on construction.  I find it difficult to believe that a builder has a greater interest in a well built finished product than a homeowner.  I realize that banks have been burned on these projects in the past, but in business you win some and you lose some.  The Vegas-style idea of "house never loses", or in this case, "bank never loses" is garbage.